Core i5-11320H vs Core i7-9850H

The Core i5-11320H packs 4 cores / 8 threads, while the Core i7-9850H offers 6 cores / 12 threads — the Core i7-9850H has 2 more cores. Boost clocks reach 4.5 GHz on the Core i5-11320H versus 4.6 GHz on the Core i7-9850H — a 2.2% clock advantage for the Core i7-9850H (base: 2.5 GHz vs 2.6 GHz). The Core i5-11320H uses the Tiger Lake-H35 (2021) architecture (10 nm SuperFin), while the Core i7-9850H uses Coffee Lake-HR (2019) (14 nm). In PassMark, the Core i5-11320H scores 10,879 against the Core i7-9850H's 10,862 — a 0.2% lead for the Core i5-11320H. Geekbench 6 single-core — the metric most relevant to gaming — records 1,447 vs 1,250, a 14.6% lead for the Core i5-11320H that directly translates to higher frame rates. Multi-core Geekbench: 5,633 vs 5,000 (11.9% advantage for the Core i5-11320H). L3 cache: 8 MB (total) on the Core i5-11320H vs 12 MB (total) on the Core i7-9850H.

The Core i5-11320H uses the FCBGA1449 socket (PCIe 4.0), while the Core i7-9850H uses BGA1440 (PCIe 3.0) — making them incompatible on the same motherboard. Both support up to DDR4-3200 memory speed. The Core i7-9850H supports up to 128 GB of RAM compared to 64 GB — 66.7% more capacity for professional workloads. Both feature 2-channel memory with ECC support. PCIe lanes: 20 (Core i5-11320H) vs 16 (Core i7-9850H) — the Core i5-11320H offers 4 more lanes for additional GPUs or NVMe drives. Chipset compatibility: HM570,QM580,WM590 (Core i5-11320H) and HM370,CM246 (Core i7-9850H).

Neither processor supports overclocking. Only the Core i5-11320H supports AVX-512 instructions — important for machine learning and scientific applications. Virtualization support: VT-x, VT-d, EPT (Core i5-11320H) vs VT-x, VT-d (Core i7-9850H). Both include integrated graphics — Iris Xe Graphics (96 EU) (Core i5-11320H) and Intel UHD Graphics 630 (Core i7-9850H) — useful as a fallback for troubleshooting or display output without a dedicated GPU. Primary use case: Core i5-11320H targets Productivity, Core i7-9850H targets High Performance Laptop. Direct competitor: Core i5-11320H rivals Ryzen 5 5600H.